Project Justice
Project Justice might not be everything I hoped for. But North America was lucky to see this title at all. P-Justice is actually the sequel to Rival Schools (for the PSOne). Capcom of USA was a little worried about releasing this game. With all the recent school shootings, a game that seemingly promoted fighting inside a school setting didn't seem like a good idea. Luckily Capcom got some guts and brought the game stateside anyways. Just under the new name, Project Justice. Which won't draw as much attention as the title, Rival Schools, would have.
The game play (for the most part) remains true to the original. Your characters have a good selection of basic moves. With a large number of special attacks and team-up moves per fighter. The catch is that the special and team attacks use up your charge bar. But don't worry, more often than not you have enough power to perform all the attacks you want. Instead of two fighters per team, you can now create a three person group. You can also perform "Interruption" attacks which occur during Team-Up Moves. For example, say your opponent has just pulled off a Team-Up move and you jam on your attack buttons. You then enter "Interruption" mode where team members from both sides come running out at each other. If you land a hit in this mode, your enemy's Team-Up attack is cancelled. But if you get hit first, your opponent completes the Team-Up move without further interruption. This mode is pretty frantic and kicks up the intensity of the entire game.
Unfortunately, Project Justice lacks several key modes from the original Rival Schools. You do have a Story Mode, but it only follows a pre-selected threesome from each school (I think 7 or 8 schools in total). Whereas you had individual stories and endings for each character in Rival Schools (there were over 30 characters). There are hidden characters to uncover, but not as many as those in R-Schools. P-Justice is also missing the famous sport modes. Too bad, I had fun playing those baseball and soccer mini-games as a distraction. There is a training mode, but it works like most other fighters. In Rival School's training mode you had a teacher that actually graded you on your performance. And there was a number of exercises to complete. R-Schools also had some cool anime cut-scenes and "loading" screen artwork to collect. However, P-Justice just doesn't bare this extra eye candy.
Project Justice is a solid game play experience. And the $20 retail price tag isn't bad either. But this game loses to its predecessor in terms of replay value. By no means a bad game, but it's hard to recommend to anyone but fans of the original Rival Schools game.
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Category | Rating | How & Why? |
Graphics | 7 | Solid Character & Stage Designs / Limited Character Art / Not Bad, but Not Spectacular Either - Simply Acceptable |
Music | 7 | Carries the Original, Japanese Voice-Acting / Quirky Capcom Soundtrack and Standard Sound Effects |
Gameplay | 7 | Good Selection of Fighters / Numerous Specials and Team Moves / "Interruption" Attacks are a Nice Addiction / Good Story Mode / Lacks Grade Training, Sport Modes, and Individual Stories |
Innovation | 7 | Thanks to School Violence (Shootings), "Rival Schools II" gets the name "Project Justice" / Lacks A Lot of the Original Replay Value from Rival Schools |
Replay | 7 | Decent School Story Mode / A Few Hidden Characters to Open Up / An Entertaining Title / Again, Lacks the Single-Person Story Mode, Grade Training, and Sport Modes |
Overall 7.0
Written by ShinjiZ for GameyPlace.com on July 8, 2001